The Northern Ireland Cancer Network is a partnership of HSCNI organisations, academic, charity, cancer specialists and service users working in collaboration to deliver safe and effective care, improve cancer clinical outcomes and enhance patients and carers experience and quality of life.

Who are we & what do we do?

The Northern Ireland Cancer Network was formed in 2004 as Northern Ireland’s first Regional Clinical Network and links together the organisations that provide care for people with cancer across the 5 Health & Social care trusts in Northern Ireland. The Network is part of the Health and Social Care Board.

We do not actively deliver patient care, but work closely with service users, health professionals and managers to improve cancer services and to implement national and local NHS strategies.

We:

support our members in the delivery of services that are evidence based

ensure equity of access and uniform quality of services for the population of Northern Ireland, and

The mechanisms by which hypoxic tumours evade immunological pressure and anti-tumour immunity remain elusive. Here, we report that two hypoxia-responsive microRNAs, miR-25 and miR-93, are important for establishing an immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment by downregulating expression of the DNA sensor cGAS. Mechanistically, miR-25/93 targets NCOA3, an epigenetic factor that maintains basal levels of cGAS expression, leading to repression of cGAS during hypoxia.